‽istis reclaims:
‘as if…’ (weekending May 28th 2022)
This week:
·
when a Prime Minister might have resigned (as if…);
·
when a President might have entered into peace talks (as if…);
·
when the profits of energy companies and the dividends of
shareholders and the owners of the means of producing that energy may have been
hit with a massive windfall tax by a Conservative Chancellor (as if…);
·
when BBC Radio 4’s programme ‘Start the Week’[i] encouraged us to consider
that co-operation within and between organisms, creatures and animals (and perhaps
even us) may be more the norm than previously thought,
‽istis ponders ‘as if…’
This week’s main ‘as if’ though might be not
so much the exclamatory tone of a realist/pessimist/sceptic (“As if!!!”), but
more perhaps the ‘as if’ of someone imagining feeling as if they were
another, imagining thinking as if they were another, imagining behaving as
if they were another – living in the light of all that imagining, all that as
if…
With apologies then, for it’s more
ponderings on the empathy/sympathetic imagination theme that cropped up last
week and has made an appearance in other previous blog entries….
·
What if party-goers (and those who may have let them party or
turned an eye) had, just for a moment, tried to think and feel as if they were the Queen on
the evening before Prince Philip’s funeral and then behave accordingly; as if they were the person standing
in the rain, in a flower bed to get near the window of a care home to try and
explain yet again why they could not come inside and hold a hand‽
·
What if policy-making was undertaken as if ‘nothing about
us, without us’ (that’s "Nihil de nobis, sine nobis" for all you
types who perhaps like to throw in a Latin phrase to quite possibly prove to
their parents and peers that the expensive education was not wasted and just how
clever they must be…) was the over-riding principle – including the views and
wishes and feelings of the excluded and discriminated against, those disabled
by society and the organisation and arrangements of society‽ What if the
idea of a Rawlsian ‘space’ where we did not know where or how (personally,
socially or geographically) we individually would turn out to be living, or who
we individually would turn out to be - was practice not just theory‽
·
What if foreign policy was formed and informed by Presidents and
generals thinking as if it were their own cities and towns and schools
and hospitals and shops and homes that were being bombed, as if it was their
grandparents and parents and partners and children (or even themselves) who were
being killed or raped, or who were hiding terrified, or who were fleeing; or who
were left lying dead, unburied in the streets of their home town; or who were left
scarred or traumatised…‽
What if we could just for a
moment imagine living as if the driving survival imperative was indeed
for the ‘fittest’ to thrive and pass on their genes - but that ‘the fittest’ was
defined as that which/who can best meld and co-operate; was the organism
that thrives in symbiotic co-existence rather than ‘fight to the death’
dominance… was the person/persons who
could see themselves as part of a greater whole and could help build, maintain and
promote a place where my wellbeing is utterly and inextricably linked with your
wellbeing‽
Perhaps, possibly, maybe just
consider and try to imagine how different you and I might then find each other
to be, and how different we might then find the world to be, the world that we
had all created together…
As if, eh‽
© Pistis
NB:
further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog entries
to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t necessarily indicate
approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’: @Pistis_wonders. ‘Follows’
and respectful comment and dialogue welcome...
[i] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017k6s
Thank you Adam Rutherford, Frans de Waal, Seirian Sumner and Nichola Raihani
